"Part of a pioneering movement."
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DENDROFEMONOLOGY: A Feminist History Tree Ring
Reclaimed deodar cedar wood sculpture
E.V. 4/4 2 AP of sculpture
60" x 55" x 3"
Framed large-scale print 4/4 2 AP
2022
"This piece was a big aha moment for me. I grew up and live near Muir Woods, and there’s that big tree ring near the entrance, which I was always so gobsmacked by. This tree is visualizing time! They illuminate how the trees are a witness to human history. But it was always so patriarchal or colonialist, with lines like “Christopher Columbus discovered America” or “the Battle of Hastings.” However, I also felt like those timelines tell a colonialist and patriarchal story. The feminist history tree ring imagines what alternate histories could be told.I remember thinking, I want to see a feminist history tree ring! I need to see that! And I want my daughters to see that! I wanted everybody to see that!
The science of tree ring dating is called dendrochronology. So I called this piece Dendrofemonology: A Feminist History Tree Ring. In these artworks I’m playing with both dendrochronology and time, because I’m thinking about how these trees have lived thousands of years. So many monuments are made out of stone and they last too long. They’re about ideas that are old and dated. This timeline represents the past, the present, and where we want to go."
Watch our new seven minute film which explores the creative process and the ideas behind the sculpture and moveable monument, Dendrofemonology: A Feminist History Tree Ring.
Dendrofemonology: A Feminist History Tree Ring sculpture debuted as part of Tiffany Shlain's Human Nature exhibition in The San Francisco Ferry Building's Shack15 in November, 2022. A print of the artwork was part of the de Young Open at the de Young Fine Art Museum in San Francisco Sept 2023. The sculpture then was installed on the National Mall in Washington DC Nov 1-4, 2023, for a feminist art activation. This moveable monument then traveled to Madison Square Park, in NYC for A Mobilization of Women's Rights and the Planet September 21st, 2024. A framed print edition was part of the the "Artists for Kamala" benefit auction, an online fundraiser to support Vice President Kamala Harris's presidential campaign, featuring works by artists including Jenny Holzer, Jeff Koons, Amy Sherald, and Simone Leigh. Dendrofemonology was also part of Shlain's solo exhibition You Are Here at Nancy Hoffman Gallery in fall of 2024. It then traveled to be on view at the Women’s Art Center of the Hamptons. It currently is installed at 21c Museum Hotel St. Louis's year long exhibition of contemporary feminist art The Future is Female. This exhibition also includes Mickalene Thomas, Zoë Buckman, and Jenny Holzer. An edition will also be on view for Shlain's joint exhibition Ancient Wisdom for a Future Ecology: Trees, Time & Technology at di Rosa Center for Contemporary Art's San Francisco's Minnesota Street Project Arts Campus opening on Jan 20, 2026. There will be a convening for International Women's Day on March 8, 2026. Highlights below.
National Mall in Washington, DC Nov 1-4, 2023
You can read a chapter Tiffany wrote about the artwork and its installation on the National Mall in D.C., titled You Are Here, in a book on women’s leadership by Dr. Nancy O’Reilly — available here.
Madison Square Park, NYC Sep. 21, 2024
A Feminist History Tree Ring at 21c Museum Opening from July 15th, 2025 in Hamptons.
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Read more about The Future Is Female exhibition at the 21c Museum in St. Louis, where my sculpture, Dendrofemonology: A Feminist History Tree Ring, was installed alongside works by many of my favorite feminist artists.
21c Museum Feminist Gathering in STL on October 8th, 2025.
A large-scale framed photograph of Dendrofemonology was featured at the de Young Museum de Young Open Exhibition Sept 2023 to Jan 2024.
de Young Opening Sept 2023
Artists For Kamala
A large-scale framed photograph of Dendrofemonology was auctioned off for the Artists for Harris Art Sale and one of the first pieces to be acquired. Other artists who are a part of this benefit auction and sale include Cindy Sherman, Jeff Koons, Judy Chicago, Simone Leigh, Amy Sherald, Deb Kass, Richard Serra, Jenny Holzer, Ed Ruscha, and more.
Artists for Kamala, October 2024.
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PRESS
"Tiffany Shlain’s Feminist Art Answers the ‘Urgent’ Call to Fight for Democracy and Women’s Place in History" ~
Temporary monument brings a feminist timeline of history to Washington, DC’s National Mall ~
At the National Mall, Artist Tiffany Shlain Is Rewriting Women into U.S. History ~ Ms Magazine
Feminist Tree Ring is a Moveable Monument Which Has Become a Visual Locus for Galvanizing Collective Action in Feminist Interventions ~ White Hot Magazine
Feminist Tree Ring Stands Tall on the National Mall ~ Print Magazine
Dendrofemonology A Feminist History Tree Ring on the National Mall ~ Surface Magazine
"At such a pressing time in American politics, the following few artists and organizations are stepping up to guide this delivery of decisive power." ~ Art, Currently
Dendrofemonology timeline text burned into the wood with pyrography:
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50,000 BCE Goddesses are worshiped.
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10,000-3000 BCE Women are healers, shamans, and warriors. A number of societies acknowledge multiple genders.
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3100 BCE Literacy develops, and seeds of patriarchy spread.
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2400 BCE Mesopotamian law declares: “If a woman speaks to a man out of turn, her teeth will be smashed in by a burnt brick.”
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200 BCE Goddess worship is forbidden in Judaism, and later, in Islam and Christianity.
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690 Wu Zetian becomes the first—and only—female ruler of China.
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1100 Matrilineal and matriarchal Hopi tribe establishes the community of Oraibi in present-day Arizona.
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1450 to 1918 50,000 women tortured and executed as witches across Europe and America.
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1576-1610 Queen Amina rules over Zazzau (present-day Nigeria).
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1690s Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz becomes the first published feminist in the Americas.
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1776-1860s Abortion up to four months of pregnancy is legal in the United States.
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1880s Inspired by indigenous and abolitionist leaders and British suffragists, first-wave feminism gains momentum in the United States.
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1920 19th Amendment grants US women the right to vote, although most women of color are disenfranchised until the passage of the 1965 Voting Rights Act.
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1920 The Soviet Union legalizes abortion.
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1960 FDA approves birth control pill in the United States
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1960 Sirimavo Bandaranaike of Ceylon (present-day Sri Lanka) becomes the first woman to be elected to lead a democratic country.
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1962 Dolores Huerta co-founds US National Farm Workers' Association.
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1960s Second-wave feminism begins with leaders including Dorothy Pitman Hughes, Betty Friedan, Gloria Steinem, Flo Kennedy, and Shirley Chisholm.
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1963 First woman in space Valentina Tereshkova flies a solo mission and orbits Earth 48 times.
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1972 Title IX prohibits gender-based discrimination in US federally-funded educational programs and activities.
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1972 The US Senate approves addition of the Equal Rights Amendment to the Constitution. (The states have not yet ratified it.)
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1973 Roe vs. Wade legalizes abortion in all US states and territories.
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1974-1980 The Combahee River Women’s Collective calls out the interconnectedness of sexism, racism, and homophobia, and demands change in mainstream feminism and civil rights movement.
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1975 Icelandic Women’s Strike held to protest inequality in the workplace and the home. 90% of women participate, and 15 years later Iceland elects a woman president.
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1989 Kimberlé Crenshaw defines the concept of intersectionality and ushers in third-wave feminism.
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1993 Women allowed to wear pants on the floor of the US Senate.
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2006 Tarana Burke begins #MeToo movement.
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2016 Hillary Rodham Clinton receives the majority of votes in the US presidential election.
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2017 An estimated 5 million people attend Women’s Marches globally. #MeToo goes viral.
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2017 Oregon becomes first state to include non-binary gender category on IDs.
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2020-2022 US elects first female Vice President Kamala Harris and first trans State Senator, Sarah McBride; Ketanji Brown Jackson becomes first Black woman confirmed to Supreme Court.
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2022
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Roe v. Wade is overturned, eviscerating federal protection of reproductive rights in the U.S.
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Globally, 65 countries have legalized abortions, four in the last year.
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Globally, 86 women have been elected president or prime minister to date…
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Today:
